We are currently staying in a campsite for 3 nights - pure luxury to not be moving and it is quite the campsite. We are on a hill over a lake which we can walk down some steps to and swim and do water activities. Whilst we have been here I have been wakeboarding on one afternoon and then white water rafting for a full day. Wakeboarding was fun however we were using a wake skate with no foot bindings just one foot hook which was huge and a paddle board behind a fishing boat and not an actual wakeboard. I surprised myself by being actually ok and getting up really quickly and having quite a bit of fun on the wake skate. I started on the paddle board and managed to swap my feet to have my right foot in front instead of left whilst going along which impressed the staff to no end as they were sure that I should have fallen off - thank goodness for my good balance.

I decided that I could not come to the Nile and not white water raft considering all rapids are between grade 3 and 5 with grade 5 being the hardest you can do commercially. I have rafted before so I went for the option of doing a tandem inflatable raft (croc) which is a lot less stable than the big rafts and could be much more tailored to what I wanted as it was just me and a guide. Lefite (probably wrong spelling) a local muscle boy and I set off. When he agreed to let me get out to take a photo of me standing on a rock in the middle of the first pool instead of practising what to do I decided that I was in for a good day. I also got to chillax at the front of the raft and Lefite did most/all of the paddling between the rapids. He kept telling me to relax, rest, don't worry… I will do it. No stop, it is ok, I am tough. So who was I to argue, I sat across the raft and followed his instructions. This did mean that my legs got a little sunburnt but also that at times if I got too hot I just jumped in and held onto the back of the raft whilst he paddled - awesome way to travel! Crocodiles who are rarely seen on that stretch of river decided to stay away today thankfully, I clearly looked a little burnt and tough for their liking.

We did 8 rapids and covered 21km. There was only 1 grade 3 rapid and the rest were 4 and 5. They were, in a word, AWESOME! We were team crazy and when our raft did a backflip in one rapid we really lived up to our name. When we went over I had to hold onto the rope around our raft and my pole which was no easy feat. Lefite was amazing at grabbing me out of the water and flipping me in the boat. In one rapid I fell out in the first wave, he quickly pulled me back in and then we hit the second wave and I fell out again to be quickly recovered again and dragged back in… did I mention the word awesome…! We had to walk around half of one rapid as it is class 6 and our insurance would definitely not cover that. I was a little disheartened until I saw the amount of water that was moving through that rapid and decided that walking was just fine as I wanted to live past the next 10 minutes. Life jackets are good, but this was like having about 200 washing machines on full spin cycle taking up the whole breadth of the river. We hoped in half way through the rapid when it went back to grade 5 which was still pretty extreme so I was happy.

Back at the campsite now enjoying our last night and Laura's birthday! Sneaky tent mate didn't tell any of us that it was her birthday so we are now going to have another big night in her honour - afterall we don't really have anything else to do.